Mugglewear
by wickedDiSaster
Summary: It wasn't stubbornness that caused my doom. I always thought it was part of my heritage, part of me. Why stop wearing perfectly common muggle sleepwear just because purebloods found them extravagant? COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** Don't own it, don't sue

It wasn't stubbornness that caused my doom. I always thought it was part of my heritage, part of me. That I should not give into any more of their pureblooded prejudice. Why stop wearing perfectly common muggle sleepwear just because purebloods found them extravagant; they were not even suggestive, simple shorts and shirts my mother had gotten me for Christ's sake!

The first time Harry and I found them gawking in the common room, Harry covered his scar. It wasn't long before I made a point of not letting their silly ideas make me hide my most confortable briefs or get a wizard robe to sleep, and neither of my fellow muggleborn friends did either so why should I have started.

Of course, there were not many muggleborns in Slytherin and none of the few there, if any at all, would have dared take such a stance for mere clothes. I cannot help to think I should have known. But it had been so long since the first shocked glance at my sleep attire that when the Head boy directed such look my way I blamed it on my disheveled hair, but no boy on earth merited me combing it again just to go back to sleep – least of all Malfoy. Therefore, I rolled my eyes to his raised eyebrow and ignored him.

It was not until Blaise's whistled guffaw during a late study session that I finally recognized what the fuzz was about; but by then I was used to ignore his stupid friend's jests as well and it wasn't long before my friends came over as well and their lack of shock showed my point.

To think such a silly detail was what caught his attention to me was stupid, and it was not until much later that it even crossed my mind to relate it at all.

He had started making a habit of taking peaks at me when I was working, studying, or even sleeping and our arguments had turned more intimidating; and it wasn't that I'd started to think of him as intimidating, it was just that suddenly and without any warning I'd find him taking much needed room from my personal space. I did not make much of the first times I would catch him sputtering his venom at me mere inches from my face, but the fact they tended to render me speechless was rather disturbing.

I blamed the dreams I had started to have about him on my raging hormones and ignored them altogether, up until one day, I discovered that he had started to take his ogling habits further, but by then it was too late.

It was not rare for neither of us to find the other drooling over an assignment, or sprawled over them on our common room desk. It had been shocking to discover he was almost as obsessed with his studies as I was, and it had been somewhat disturbing the first time I opened my eyes to find him staring at me. He would pretend obliviousness of course, and go about his business as if nothing had happened, but it was not until my dreams started that the real hell broke loose.

I had fallen asleep on the couch with a book on top, and I have no idea how the history of ancient runes had taken me to imagine silvered strands of hair tangled in my hands and scorching kisses travelling from my earlobe to my neck. I am sure I must have sighed then; while in my dreams my kisser travelled his lips over my neck in what I considered too-soft-for-my-liking touches. "More" I practically begged, while he kept ignoring my demands and I felt an intake of breath on my collarbone, as if my mystery man was suddenly taking in my scent and slowly travelling upwards.

It was surprisingly more pleasant than his kisses and felt entirely different, but I felt compelled to claim for more so I did, once, twice, and each time louder, until the sound of my own voice woke me up to find real silver hair hovering over me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** Don't own it, don't sue

To say I tensed all over was an understatement.

Just as quickly as I did though, the book on my chest was taken from me and the empowering figure of Draco Malfoy stood over the couch holding it.

"You fell asleep with my book in your hands Granger, try and be more careful in the future," he sneered at me.

His book? Really? But how? I'd picked it up from the shelves, I thought they were school property! Did he hear me? How long was he there? My head was a blur of shocked paranoia, but by the time I sat up, he was gone. I took shuddering steps to my room. By the time it dawned on me what had happened I was lying on my bed in the middle of the night unable to sleep. I was dreading to see him the next day and a completely un-gryffindor part of me had decided I would not acknowledge him ever again, or be able to look him in the eyes for the remainder of my life.

To my utter amazement the improbability of my decision proved quite easier than I expected the following days, I wondered if he was avoiding me as well, but just as unexpectedly as his disappearance was, he suddenly came barging into the common room one evening, demanding I stopped contaminating it at once. No matter how humiliated I'd been I was not about to start taking his crap for it; so I barked a reply just as rude and just like that, the most absurd and astounding fight we'd ever had took place.

Fireworks in the middle of the room would not have deterred us; books, quills, and part of the furniture were destroyed in the process; hexes, curses and flashes of light traveling back and forth until he had me cornered against my own door. He growled all his hatred at my face, and instead of backing off, I had raved back just as much. Unaware of how dangerously close I came to his lips until my glaring eyes came face to face with them. An abrupt desire to take them invaded me. I wanted to kiss them, feel them, bite them; and while I repressed such ludicrous thirst for him, I almost did not take notice that my slow retreat had left me plastered against the wall with his lips no less farther than before.

Just like that, before I could register anything else, or take notice of what was happening, he emitted an infuriated growl, and kissed me.

It left in shame the scorching kisses of my dreams, yet it ended just as fast as it started and he left me there, completely petrified. With the stupid notion of how I would not be able to ignore the identity of my mystery-man from now on.

Fixing up the mess in our common room took hours, but I refused to go to sleep after the incident. My fear of what my dreams could bring was too overwhelming to give into it. So I spent all night there and when it was early enough to have breakfast I left our quarters in a flash.

Sunday morning had the Gryffindor table in the great hall all to myself, but I didn't care; I finished quickly and packing some food for later I headed towards the library. It had been a while since I had spent any time there, what with having all the books I needed charmed into my common room shelves at all times.

I spent so much energy trying to avoid the subject that I didn't have a chance of seeing the real peril I'd caught myself in. For it was then that Draco Malfoy decided I'd become more than a simple nuisance; it was then he decided to get me off his system, whether I liked it or not.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this.

**A/N:** Here's where the mature scenes start to take place, read at your own risk.

I never imagined he'd make himself invisible to wait in my chambers so as soon as I reached them I breathed a sigh of relief. I spelled my sleepwear on and gave into unconsciousness as soon as my head hit the pillow. He didn't even have to wait long.

It was almost like the time in the couch with the only exception that when my lips whispered his name in lieu of another plea, I felt his lips crashing into mine. As forceful and passionate as in my doorstep, my shock was quickly replaced with lust as my hands and eyes encountered real, pale and naked abs beneath my fingertips.

He was soft, and strong; rough and passionate, but most of all, he was intoxicating. I did not think; I could not, for the life of me, do anything that wasn't feeling him or feeling him touch me, for every touch, grope and kiss was blinding.

I forgot about anything that could be slightly close to common sense or logic; he stripped me of any sense of self-awareness or shame. It was raw, it was wild and rough; I could not get enough of it so I begged for more. Exactly what more, I could not tell; for every single centimetre of my body was flushed against his and I couldn't think of how it would be possible to get anything _more._ Yet I wanted it, I needed it; so I demanded it – I ordered it. I became just as wild with him for not giving it to me until one sudden movement of my knee had him pressing against me just that much more, just right where I ached the most, and my moan transformed into a wave of movement that added to the pressure and had him growling with a vengeance. I somehow found a rhythm that had me screaming to the heavens while he sucked a particularly sore spot on my collarbone.

His pulling and pushing of clothes became more frantic, making me climb again into the madness that was he, that was it all. Out of the blue he spelled his pants off and I wouldn't have realised if it wasn't for the sudden exposure of more of his skin at my disposal. I didn't think much of it, I didn't think anything at all; my ever-present thirst for more was slightly relieved. I don't know how he did it, I don't remember but a few more brushings and pushing of clothes between us when I felt him – whatever part of him I felt – pressing against that antagonizing part of me that had me aching all over, probing him for more, always more.

A sudden flush of pain mixed with pleasure and a blur of slurred profanities whispered in my neck stopped everything; marring my waves of exquisite and unimaginable desire. It could have been a few seconds, it could have been an eternity, but it was not long enough for me to recover my senses, for just in that precise moment when a world of hell would have dawned on me, he bit my neck and started all over again. The next movement, the same one I swore had gotten me hurt, had me grinding to him in pleasure. The last of what could have been described as a thought, was if he had done it on purpose, if he could use it as punishment again. It did not matter though, for I was sure to have caused him far more pain and marks with all the scratches, bites and bruises I had left where I held him as I climbed that wonderful stair to heaven once more.

I cannot remember how we ended up in a heap of limbs on my bed before I fell asleep. I just know that we did, and that I found my bed normally empty when I woke up and climbed out of it feeling strangely sore. I picked up my teeth brush and took it into my mouth before my slurred eyes finally hit my reflection on the mirror and my sleepy face turned into a horrified one as my eyes travelled through all the marks on my body.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this.

Just like that, the unbearable weight of what had happened came crashing on me. I could not make head or tails of it. I entered a stage of denial for the longest time I can remember, but at the end, I ended up in a pile of tears in the bathroom floor. I missed breakfast and the first classes without much ado on my part; the fear of my friends coming to see what had happened to me, and my inability to face them with the horrifying truth had me crawling back up and concealing every sign of what I had done with my body.

I accomplished a pristine, almost flawless appearance and took every secret passageway I knew to get to classes, trying to avoid as much human contact as I could before the masses of students started crowding the classroom. It wasn't long until I heard the simultaneous sighs of relief my friends gave when they saw me, and sooner still came the dreadful question of what had happened to me and the disbelieving stares that followed my hushed excuse of, "I fell asleep."

The rest of my classes were lost in my never-ending attempts to avoid anything and everything that could take me to the mere thought of him. It wasn't a wonder I was practically kicked out of the Gryffindor common room at high hours of the night before my so-called-friends decided they needed their sleep.

It was the fact that even that late at night, when I thought I could not possibly cross with him in our common room, that I found him sprawled in my bed no less, after foolishly casting every locking spell I knew in my door.

Imagine how I felt when in a cracked laugh, he broke the silence, "What, Granger, afraid someone could break in?" I prayed every deity while I turned back that he were not more than a figment of my imagination, the way my wand suddenly went flying into his hands was proof enough he wasn't. "Or perhaps you're actually afraid of someone interrupting?" the cocky bastard taunted me, lifting himself up. He walked towards me.

"Get away from me!" I spat.

"Or what?" he muttered closer still "are you planning on leaving more marks this time?"

"Fuck you!"

"Planning to…" he smirked before his treacherous lips caught mine. This time I fought, and tried to push him away, which only seemed to fuel him even more. He pressed me up against him despite all my efforts and made a point of proving he could, just by continuing kissing me in that overpowering way of his. It was hard not to respond to his touches, not to salivate at the feel of him alone, so my fighting against him soon turned into restrain. I felt him smirk before he hungrily devoured me again, lifting my hands away and hooking them above my head with one hand.

I growled to push him away but my breathing alone sold the way my deceitful body reacted to him. He laughed while he withdrew to look at me. It was the first time I saw the lust in his eyes, and the first time they shook me to the core. His flustered lips, his muzzled hair, his fierce stance and that ever-hungry way in which he looked at me, it was all I could do not to pounce on him.

Not to say my glare faltered, cause it didn't, but that ever burning ache that had me thrashing underneath him the night before roared to life, while he savoured how his hands opened up the way for more skin. My pushing and moving had him growling in pleasure and had me feeling his response clearly pressed against my middle so I stopped, if only because I had a feeling that if I kept moving I might have started pushing against him rather than away from him.

It was inevitable that I ended up giving in; it was despicable that I became just as rough with him; and it was all I could do with my rage and frustration, to take it up on him while I clawed and blemished his perfect skin.

By the time it ended, I pushed him off from me; he merely dragged me back against him to make a point, his still laboured breath tickling my neck while he laughed at my futile attempts.

The following morning, I opened my eyes to find his naked glory picking up his pants from somewhere behind my chair, I gulped. My eyes travelled from his delicious chest to his perfectly sculpted arms, down his tight derriere, and up again, to find his eyes filling up with lust after discovering me gaping at him. I tried to school my expression into a straight face but I knew it was too late as he crawled back in bed to ravish me again.

**A/N:** From here on, I have a feeling this story will be frowned upon, so I'll answer before someone brings it up; this story is about her getting herself back, so prepare to see her lose herself some more in next chapters before that happens.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this.

It was so that I started to find myself more times that I'll ever dare to admit flushed against the door of a cupboard, cornered in an empty hallway, trapped inside an old classroom, hidden beneath the Quidditch stands, or kidnapped into the forbidden forest with him against my skin.

I stopped fighting at some point or another. After a while, I even started to expect him, or be annoyed with him for taking his time before taking me. It somehow reached a level of normalcy where I would calmly tell him off when he captured my neck in the middle of a study session. It was like if everything went back to normal but in a completely deranged universe. He had his friends coming over for study sessions while I had mine doing the same; and he would be annoyed and especially rough that night if I took too long with them.

I'd roll my eyes at his demands of not wearing my muggle robes while he had his friends over and after a while, his demands of not wearing them while in the company of anyone at all.

It wasn't that I'd deluded myself into thinking we were in a relationship, it was that I failed to notice how deep I fell for him by the time his father instructed him to take some Greengrass Slytherin girl as a girlfriend. He not only conveyed it to me in utter annoyance, but he actually did it and took her as his girlfriend.

I can't put into words how watching him kiss her in front of everyone in the school broke me, I don't know how many tears I shed, or can explain how it felt that I had to first hide in the depths of the forbidden forest to shed them. I did not even have someone to confide my pain to, and I was not about to let him witness it.

It was too long for me to remember until I found the courage to come back, I made sure to conceal every single sign of my distress. Imagine how I felt when I finally reached my room and found him asleep from waiting for me. To my disgrace, the click on the door woke him up before I could have helped it, and he had the gall to be annoyed and angry with me even then.

It was a sign of how hollow was my abyss that his unfounded jealousy gave me a shallow sense of hope, too shallow to ease my hurt. He could not see any of my pain and for some reason my perpetual silence infuriated him more. I took no real notice of the hard grip he kept over my wrists or the menacing way in which he had me cornered against my own bed; just looking at him hurt, so I lowered my face to the ground not really listening to his rant.

No amount of self-reproach was enough; I did not have any possible excuse; it was my fault that I was feeling this way. His presence was not helping me at all. I was tired, exhausted, shattered; as such, I fell onto the bed not paying attention to his enraged roar of frustration when he finished pushing me back into the mattress.

It wasn't until then that his restless tirade stopped. I don't know what was it he saw, I was sure he couldn't see my bloodshot eyes and yet he somehow managed to see through my pain. I felt it was logical, for me it was so profound that I could have sworn it was tangible.

His rage contorted into something aching to panic, he started to desperately, grope around my body looking for something I did not know. He finally summoned his wand and before I could prevent it or guess what he was doing, he spelled my glamour off, before I could so much as push him away, his panic became dread. For the first time in the evening, he could not voice his fears.

"Get off me…" I grunted, trying to push him away. He gulped, and without any warning he disappeared my clothes leaving me in the top and briefs I wore under my shirt, I did not understand his heaved sigh of relief at whatever he'd discovered. I pushed harder but his grip of me was so strong, I didn't even jolt him. I gave up, turning away from him in a vain attempt to hide the tears. He looked up from his short-lived reprieve with inquiring eyes. His questions followed soon after, answered with the same plea for him to leave me the hell alone.

It didn't take long before my response infuriated him too, and he made a point of imposing his presence on me, closer every time he asked me the same damned questions, until his furious lips encountered mine. My tears turned into moans of protests mixed with my sorrow, which he swallowed whole. I eventually gave in, delving into the land of oblivion that his touch offered me. Who was I to deny such sore illusion of peace that eluded my world of agony so easily, why did I have to think or feel anything at all that wasn't his touches, his treacherous, deceitful touches?

I didn't stop crying, not really, my pain never really left me, it was just numbed a little. It made my reaction to him unlike anything we'd ever had. It was slow; _I_ was painfully slow, I'd never been so gentle on him, as if the knowledge of having him for the last time was too excruciatingly painful to bear, and it was. My touches infuriated him, I could tell, but I couldn't stop feeling what I felt, nor reacting to it the way I did, and how I wished I could have stopped.

I took almost all night. I made it last that long and when it was unavoidably over, sleep never came to me despite how drained I felt. The sole sight of his pale chest rising in tranquil silence, he looked like an angel, like a god, like the very things that I knew with painful certainty he would never be, not to me. I would never have him, he would never see me like anything more than a mudblood, something to use and then dispose of, I would never be anything worth acknowledging in the halls, let alone be called a girlfriend, a partner, nothing.

What was I to him if not something he indulged in from time to time, something he felt was rightfully his, as if he'd taken enough trouble to have me. One day I would bore him and he was sure to move on to the next hobby, perhaps Quidditch, perhaps someone else.

The worst of all was that my rage and pain did not make me strong enough to fight him, I knew that no matter how hard I tried avoiding him, he'd end up cornering me and forcing himself on me until I succumbed to his demands. I couldn't even prevent him from bedding his bloody girlfriend if he hadn't already. The thought alone felt like a crack in my chest; I could not bear to look at him anymore. I isolated into the corner facing the window with my reflections far away from the room.

If I was so smart, why couldn't I think of a way out of him?

The answer came as clear as the rising sun in front of me, it was evident and undeniable. Deep inside I did not want to, after everything that had happened, part of me still hoped. Hoped he was only with her because his parents made him; hoped he'd eventually see me, really see me; hoped that maybe, if only I waited long enough I could make him feel the way I felt for him. I knew this would never happen and yet my certainty was not enough to quench my unfounded hope.

He woke up eventually, annoyed as he was to realise I was not in bed, he dragged me to his side, securely hooked in his hold while his breath nuzzled the back of my head. I stayed awake for a bit more but I eventually slept as if accepting my fate. By the time I woke up, he was no longer there, and I was not surprised.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this.

It started with putting one foot in front of the other, I told myself to meticulously, start my day and my life again, to continue with every routine or habit I had, from spending time with my friends to answering questions in class. I claimed to everyone that dared to ask if I was all right, that a dear relative of mine had passed away, and I didn't receive anything else after that.

Slowly I built a shell of my old self around me, I discovered the best trick to keep Malfoy at bay was to keep my friends longer around, so I started doing so until he discovered that parading his girlfriend bothered me just as much and I caved in just to make him stop. There was so much I could take from him, even his friends noticed there was something off about me, and were not afraid to point it out.

Nott went as far as to tell how the broken image I painted made him want to 'fuck me up' that much more. His innuendo wasn't lost on anyone, but Nott didn't faze me, it was the silent growl that escaped _his_ lips as the rest of his friends laughed that disturbed me, because such displays had me repeating to myself like a mantra that his jealousy did not mean anything at all.

It was ludicrous the way he got enraged by the most innocent incidents. An accidental brush of Neville's hand that had the poor sod blushing in embarrassment, a plea to borrow my notes from a fifth year Ravenclaw, a request from Michael Corner to study in the library, were a few of the episodes that had me reciting said mantra like my sanity depended on it.

"Stop wearing that bloody, muggle crap you have on!" he'd roar.

"Would your highness wish anything else perhaps?" I'd calmly answer, "Perhaps you'd wish I turned my pants into ropes and the jacket into chains you could tie to my bed?" I continued before passing him to head to the door.

"Don't give me ideas, Granger. I might just take you up in the offer!" He stopped me by the wrist.

"It was sarcasm, Draco, get off!" I freed myself.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going in this freaking cold like that?"

"To the owlery, Draco, and there's such a thing called warming charms, you should know by now!" I would have slammed the door shut in his face then if it wasn't for the hand that stopped the door and dragged me back inside slamming it shut behind me instead.

"I'll lend you my owl then," he snarled. I could have rolled my eyes.

"Whatever sets you off," I heaved. "But then I'll be leaving anyway, like it or not."

"Do you have the slightest idea of how that ridiculous excuse of a robe makes you look?"

"Here, let me guess? Is this the part where you insinuate I dress like a common whore? Or perhaps you'll start on how everything I own looks like something I borrowed from someone too small to fit me properly?"

"It's practically glued up your -!"

"That's the way they are supposed to fit!" I roared, taking a breath to recover my bearings, "Not to mention I've dressed like this since before I even arrived to this school, and if anything, my reputation here is but of stuck up prude!"

"Well you and me know you're anything but a prude, don't we?"

"That's just it, Draco. You and only you know any different and you bloody well know that!" I snarled.

"Is that something you'd like to change, then?"

"What? Are you out of your mind? Yes, I would like it to change, I would like for you to leave me the hell alone! Whatever made you think I wanted to do so just to fall pray of another prick like yourself!"

"Then stop acting like that's what you want!"

"I'm not acting like anything! This is how I've always dressed! Why does it represent a problem to you now? I'm not provoking anyone."

"Yes, you are! You always have! The fact your Gryffindor puppies have adapted to you doesn't mean the rest of the school has or ever will!"

"I'm not going to change myself just because of your pureblood, stuck-up-ideas."

"But you live in a pureblood, stuck-up world! You're surrounded by pureblood, stuck-up bastards! You have to stop provoking them or you won't like how they'll retaliate!"

"I know how to defend myself and I am a muggleborn like it not. I will not start dressing like you just because you think it wise. And may I remind you, Draco, I'm not the only one! This is not the pureblood world you think it is!"

He growled in frustration, "I don't care about your deluded comrades and what world they think they live in, I'm not bedding them! I couldn't care any less if they contracted any nasty disease one of these days. You, on the other hand are not tempting your luck anymore!"

I couldn't believe his nerve! His words stung deep enough to bring tears to my eyes. The way he could go from reviving that stupid hope inside my stubborn heart to clarifying how I was nothing more than one of his toys in risk of being the carrier of foul diseases had me in the verge of a breakdown.

"Tough luck on you, Draco, you might just have to accept such risk because there's nothing you can do about that. At least that field of my life is something you can't control," I whispered, leaving the room in a blur.

I thanked the heavens it was Sunday and no one saw me crying. It took me a while before I calmed myself enough to come back to my chambers, only to find small piles of ashes leading to my room in the common room. Some of them were still glowing with fire, it took me a couple of seconds to realise they were what was left of my wardrobe. The bastard had burned my clothes. I rushed to my room to find him finishing the job.

"Don't ever tell me what I can or can't do, Granger."

"Very mature of you…" I glared at him, taking my wand out to start remediating the problem, it was probably going to take me all night but I was not about to be left without clothes. I started chanting the counter spell quietly but instead of seeing my clothes reappear from the ashes, I was instead reviving the glow of fire on each heap of ashes.

His crack of laugh turned my despair into wrath. "Did you really think I would just burn them, Granger?"

The pink sweater grandma had sewn for me, the pants dad sent for my birthday, the shirt I had taken from mom on Christmas, the only thing I had left of them!

I started throwing open my drawers to find them empty. I turned around to summon just those small garments that really meant a lot for me, all that I drew were heaps of ashes.

I fell to my knees on the floor. All he had left for me to wear was my uniform, still lying folded on top of my chair, his laugh still ringing in my ears.

"I'd buy you clothes, but what would people think if they suddenly saw you wearing wizarding robes right?"

His taunt only fuelled my wrath, "You think you didn't like how I dressed? You just wait, you piece of shit; you have seen nothing yet!" I yelled slamming the door behind him, and locking it up with a silencing spell after hearing him laugh on his way out.

I sneaked out of Hogwarts that night, the knight bus took me to the closest open muggle store it could find on a Sunday at the middle of the night; god forbid it led me to another country indeed.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer:** Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this.

I got a new collection of leggings that included a leather-looking-one, tight shirts with revealing cuts, long, short and otherwise; anything loose and comfy was see-through. I was very careful not to break school rules, and I cursed myself whenever I encountered something I didn't dare to wear or considered too skanky for the tight shorts and skirts I got were only as revealing as I could bear, so I went for colour and bright instead. When I ran out of those my feet led me to the stilettos, and then the ballerinas, because there was so much my feet would bear of the former, and I was not about to let Malfoy make me feel any more pain. My last stop was in the accessory hall and by then, I finally got something that wasn't acquired by my wrath.

Of all my collection all I got were the accessories, the black glitzy sandals I actually liked, the leather-looking leggings, and a strapless fabric mix tunic.

I took the rest of my selection to the changing rooms, where one by one I made magical copies of each, leaving the originals at the store. I packed my acquisitions in a small purse and placed it in my pocket. I spent the rest of the night making said acquisitions magically indestructible.

I only got a couple of hours of sleep but the invigorating serum took every trace left away before I headed to classes. I explained my new attire with the excuse of having someone thinking it'd be a good prank to have the head girl clothes magically destroyed and that I would get back into my uniform as soon as I could get new ones.

The time that took was the time I needed to gather the courage to change the uniform I still had into as-short-as-I-could-bear and as-tight-as-I-could, without making it uncomfortable to wear. In short, it took me a week.

A week in which I enjoyed the wrath-filled glares Draco sent my way, the surprising extra attention I received from the male population of Hogwarts, and the compliments I received from my friends.

"I think we'll have to thank whoever played that prank on you, Hermione, you look brilliant. I never thought muggle-wear could be so sophisticated" Ginny had said, making the group of girls around nod approvingly.

"It's as if it gave away the idea of revealing, without showing anything at all," added Luna somewhat pensive.

"I'd say it's very sad that magical society hasn't grasped that concept yet, here you have either something proper or something entirely too revealing. Mom and I always argue with dad about that but he never lets me bring any of my muggle clothes to school," added half-blood Su Li.

Unbelievably enough it was right then and there that I received my first invitation in the ways of Justin Finch-Fletchley coming over towards me.

"Ehm, Hermione, can I have a word with you in private?" The question caught me off guard, but the loud whooshing sound the too-immature-for-their-age girls made brought a deep blush to my cheeks. I could have strangled the lot of them for calling the attention of the entire school like that.

"Yes," I gulped, "of course," removing myself from the scandalous girls with as much dignity as I could muster. To my distress, we barely made it around the hall – where I knew the nosey group would charm their hearing range – when Justin decided to stop and tell me.

"I just wanted to know if you were interested in coming over to the party Ernie and I are organizing this weekend?"

"Oh, you didn't have to take all this trouble; Harry and Ron have already talked me into it."

"No, I mean, if you want to go with me, Hermione, as a date?"

"Oh, ahm, I-" stupidly lost my ability to speak. Whoever called me smart once?

"You don't have to answer right now, just think about it, ok?" he said in a rush. "I have to go anyway." Just like that, he plunged in and kissed me on the cheek leaving me speechless and surrounded by a hoard of girls dying to tell me what and how I should dress that weekend.

My problems didn't start until much later that day, when I was lunged into the closest cupboard in my way out of my last classes of the day.

"You won't get within a three meter's range of that revolting excuse of a wizard!" he spat. "Is that clear?"

I hadn't really considered it up until then, I'd taken it as the stupid nonsense of raging teenagers. I was going to tell Justin I didn't really have time for a relationship and he deserved someone to be committed to him, because he did, because I believed it, I really did. However, it wasn't until the point where I had Draco spitting his venom at my face that I truly saw the offer for what it was.

A real relationship, a real chance of being treated like he never would, with someone that respected me for who I was and that had good intentions towards me. Someone who had seen this absurd struggle of clothes for what they were – a stance to prove my right to dress the way I was raised to, because Justin was muggleborn like me, he knew what real muggle provocative clothes looked like.

I was going to throw all that away because of the poor excuse of a man in front of me. Because of that appalling inextinguishable hope that still burned inside me.

"Or what, Draco, you'll break up with me?" I whispered. "What do you think this is? Where do you think this is going? You can't reclaim any rights on me, you have your own girlfriend; need I remind you?"

"Don't play games with me, Granger."

"Don't stress, Draco; I wasn't really going to accept. Justin deserves much more than I can give him, he deserves something real," I said moving away from him.

"That scum doesn't deserve crap."

I moved to the door to leave when he stopped me. "Let me out, Draco," I replied tired.

His scorching kiss was full of anger, "You're mine. Don't forget that."

"No, Draco, and I'll never be, don't you see? You will never have me."

"You're wrong! I can have you whenever I want," he growled, and plunged into me.

His fumbling of my clothes stopped his heated kisses. I laughed at his inability to get them off before he realised they were spelled that way. "Only you can do it, can't you?" he heaved exasperated, after trying to disappear the garments from my body. I nodded smirking slightly.

"It doesn't matter, I'll make you do it, I'll make you beg me to let you do it," he growled.

The sad thing about that statement is that he did do it.


	8. Chapter 8

****Disclaimer:** **Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this.

>

It was Saturday night and I was hoping to catch Justin before the party, I had already explained to Harry I wouldn't be able to go after having dumped the organizer. He had reluctantly accepted my excuse, not without some reproaches from Ron. I was currently striving to find Justin through the school grounds, feeling tempted to summon Harry's map from his trunk, but I felt guilty about taking it without his permission so I ended up trying a locating spell.

I was wondering what could have brought Justin towards Slytherin territory as I entered the dungeons; but I figured it was probably their reputation to get the best boost. I was turning around from a dead end I had hoped would shorten my trip, when I found my way out blocked by a group of Slytherins.

"My, my, I must say I didn't believe my eyes as we saw you taking a stroll here…" The distorted voice tipped me in on the danger, and a closer look into their hoods told me their voices weren't all they'd spelled. I tried to covertly reach my wand but it ended up flying out of my reach.

"Come on, you won't be needing that now, will you?" another one said, while the rest came rounding up on me. I kicked one out of my way and scurried out of his reach. I was halfway out of the hall I had just turned when one of their spells hit me. I stumbled on the floor. I screamed for help before a silencing hand wrapped around my mouth.

"Hurry, we don't have much time!" the brute suffocating me shouted.

To my horror though, as the rest reached us, they started to get rid of their clothes. My world came crushing in on me. I fought harder than ever, but the last thing I knew, the last one came running in on me, suffocating my fight with his mauling hands, that only left me strength to push him off. He started groping, biting and crushing as much of me as he could. I felt I wanted to crawl out of my skin, before another one pushed him off to take his turn. This one though, wanted to take a more direct approach. He went straight for my clothes.

I felt my sanity back as he was unable to rip them apart. I felt I sobbed with relief making him curse while the rest held back a laugh. After his first vanishing spell didn't work though, their snickering turned to frowns, and as his cutting spell made me bleed but otherwise showed itself ineffective, they pushed him off to each try their luck on my agony; my clothes were indestructible, but I wasn't.

They each tried a different spell, reaping, cutting and burning my skin until I was soaking in my blood. I thought they would never give up, but after a while, I had stopped looking so alluring and they stopped torturing me into giving in. They left me lying there.

I crawled out of the silenced hall swallowing my whimpers of pain as the floor grinded my skin; at that point, I didn't dare call for help, I was petrified I would encounter someone sick enough to find me appetizing after all.

I felt each hall was endless as I prayed they remained empty for the time it took me to cross them.

Just as I reached the limits of the dungeons though, a glimpse of silver hair turned my prayers at fault, filling me with static relief. I exhaled a breath with all the reprieve and pain I felt, didn't even realise my sigh of relief had taken the form of his name.

I saw his stunned figure turn into a flat out run as he saw me. Before he could so much as kneel in front of me, the fear I felt from the pain made me beg him not to touch me. It was then I recognised the dread in his eyes, the dread I'd seen when I found out about his girlfriend. It dawned on me what he'd feared back then, what had him reeling about all this time.

The hurt in his eyes made me want to elaborate, I did not mean to reject him; I just, was in pain.

"It hurts," I pleaded with what was left of my voice, "Just levitate me back, please." I had never seen him as petrified; he seemed like a zombie, he didn't mutter a word until midway into our quarters, where he schooled his petrified expression with a swallow of saliva that cracked between my laboured pants. I was focussing on the stonewalls, focussing on controlling the pain because I didn't want to break down into tears. I knew my face was smeared with blood and dirt with them, but it felt as if he was everything that was holding me together at that moment, and I was about to break him.

He broke his silence with a dry voice that sounded barely above a whisper, "Who?"


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer:** Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this.

"I don't know," I whispered just as loud, "they spelled themselves."

The way he blanched made me realise he'd been expecting my answer to be singular. He didn't ask anything else until we reached our chambers and I asked him to place me on the tub and summon my wand. I charmed the water cold as he stared at the pink stained water. He helped me sit up, and my long-sleeved see-through blouse stained his white shirt red, making him notice the many cuts I had through the drenched yellow material. He glowered in rage just looking at them, and without warning took a hold of his wand and tried to lift it up to heal me; his inability to do so had him staring back at me in realisation. "They couldn't take them off," he whispered, his eyes unreadable. I was relieved not to see them fill with pride, relief or satisfaction at any rate, but I saw him come back to his senses a little bit.

"You need to take them off now" he ascertained, bringing up something I wasn't quite ready yet. I found I was unable to rid myself of my last shield, of what was left of my dignity. I had preferred to die and begged to be killed before they continued and the pieces of fabric glued to my skin now, had been the only thing able to save me; when all my prayers, all my strength had failed me. I just couldn't. I found the hands that had gone for the hem of my blouse were holding to it in a tight fist.

"It's ok," he said covering them, "just tell me where it hurts." I heard myself breathe again as I nodded.

After he finished with whatever he could see through my clothes he brought his questioning eyes to me; I pointed to my stomach and since he couldn't see anything there he asked me to lift the hem just a little to show him what was there. I slowly did, and he went ballistic with rage as he saw the burned skin there.

He cursed them to hell and back, kicked everything on his way before he returned bringing a salve in his hands. He placed it next to the counter and vanished the water from the tub. "I need to apply this on dry skin," he explaimed, trying to charm my clothes dry to no avail. "Damn it," he cursed, and looked at me apprehensively before he carefully levitated me towards my bed. He knelt in front of me. "I need to take them off," he said, and I was preparing myself for a way out of that option when he continued, "And we need to do it soon, or it'll scar."

His comment incensed me, "I don't care," I told him, "it won't be the first mark this damn hatred has left on me."

"Damn it, Hermione, this is not a spoil of war. You won't need any reminder of what those bastards tried to do to you!"

I felt so impotent then, I wanted to curse him, wanted to curse his house, his friends, his bloody family and his damn purity to hell.

"Hermione, just-!" he cut himself off, standing up and running a hand through his head, he closed the door and threw as many locking charms as I'd heard him to know and some other dark ones I didn't recognise, then he moved my wardrobe in front of the door and turned back at me. "We are alone, just you and me," he said, "and whatever I have compelled you to do, Hermione, I never forced myself on you." I stared between the now blocked door and him. "If there's anything you're sure of," he added, "is that I wouldn't let anyone so much as grab a hair on your head. You are mine, mine alone, and I'll keep it that way if it's the last thing I do."

If he'd been trying to calm me down, his last line made me so furious, it gave me the strength I needed to push forward. "What if they already got to me," I quietly glowered, "what if what you find out is that they tortured me to take them off and I wasn't strong enough, what if I already have those repulsive diseases you didn't want to risk."

His eyes filled with dread and pain. He had not discarded the possibility entirely yet.

He knelt back in front of me, "Then I'll just have to take better care of you and hunt down the bastards that hurt you to send out the point, no one's ever touching you again."

"To send out what point, Draco, I'm nothing to you."

"Damn it, Hermione, just trust that while I'm in this room no one else is going to touch you!" He took my hands and took them to the hem of my blouse making me take a hold of them, "Please," he begged looking back at me.

I breathed once, twice, three times. He slowly coaxed me to lift it up, all the way out of my head.

The look he had when he took in my state could have killed on sight, but he did not say anything this time. He charmed me dry and applied the salve, healing whatever wound he hadn't seen before. It took him a few minutes before he led my hands down to the hem of my leggings and glanced at me encouragingly. I looked up to the heavens and gathering my wits about it, told him he'd have to help me. He placed me on an air bubble above my bed and guided my hands while I hissed in pain as the material came off, trying to avoid as much scratching of my skin as I could. He held the material away from me as soon as I pulled it down, and then we'd keep going until they were finally out, and I hoped to have shed the last of my tears that day.

If my upper body had been scorched, it was nothing compared to the state of my legs. Draco took a lot longer with them and informed me I'd need something stronger for my wounds there but that we'd have to wait until he ordered one because he didn't have that kind of thing in his chambers. I'd have to leave my skin free of contact with anything so I wasn't to move from the air-bubble.

He started removing the wardrobe from the door and taking the locking charms off the door. "What are you doing?" I hastily asked.

"I'm going to order for the ointment you need."

"What? No, you can't do that!" I panicked jumping out of the bubble to stop him, barely stumbling to avoid falling. He hurriedly helped me up, not without making me hiss in pain at the contact, but I had him, I had an iron grip on him and I wasn't about to let go. "Are you out of your mind, what do you think you are doing?" he indignantly scolded me; he levitated me back in the bubble, and reapplied the salve where I had smeared it. This time, while I had freed his hand to reach my wand, I slyly took hold of his as well. When he stood up to walk to the door I magically blocked his way with a voiceless charm. He stumbled and turned to look at me questioningly. "What are you doing?"

"You can't leave," I stated.

"I'm not leaving, I just need to get my bloody owl and he won't be able to come with the spells I've put."

I stared at the door for a moment, clearly not wanting him to take the spells off, and battling with any logical side left in me, maybe if I removed them slowly, I'd be able to deal with it better, I could stop at any time, and maybe even put them back just as quickly.

"Which spells do you need to take off?"

The way he brought his hands to rub his eyes did not appease me. "Look, Hermione, we need to get you that ointment; furthermore, you need to inform your hoard of friends you won't be showing face anytime soon, and I can guarantee you that no one is going to come bursting out that door the minute I open it, and if anyone does I'm going to have a blast skinning them alive."

I tried to convince myself he was right, but that stubborn self-preservation instinct wouldn't let me. "Ok, what did you put on the door?" I swallowed.

"Defigo, Obsidum, grecckio, conjugsido-"

"Conjugsido? But that's just for-"

"I took you first! You were mine first, and you'll be mine alone, don't ever forget that!" he heatedly answered, as if daring me to prove him wrong.

"No, Draco," I whispered. "I'm not your wife," I detached myself from him. "You'd never have me as your wife," I finally voiced, and that ever-present hope burned to ashes when he didn't say it wasn't so.

I waited for the longest time and all I got was, "It was enough to seal the charm, wasn't it?"

"What else did you use?" I asked with renewed strength I found on my pain. After he finished the list of spells, I asked him to teach me the ones I didn't know. It took me ten to fifteen minutes to learn each, but forty-five minutes later, I'd muster them all. I used his wand to put the wards down. Before the last one, I summoned the longest loose dress I had along my cloak. I was about to put them on, when he took a hold of it to stop me.

"I'm going to the infirmary," I stated. "I don't want your ointment; I don't want anything from you."

"Why? That's not what you had in mind when you started asking what I'd cast."

"Because I'm not yours, because I'll never be. And having you around just confuses me more. You're never going to change; you're never going to leave her, never going to _see_ me. You're mad at them for hurting me but no one's ever hurt me more than you."

"I never hurt you like that! I never would."

"No, you hurt me in ways they never could. You break me, you tear me up inside, and you don't even see it, you don't even see me!"

"You're barking mad, you don't know what you're talking about, and you're for the life of me not going to put that on in that state! You'll just ruin your healing." He threw my clothes away and ripped his wand from my grasp, trapping my wrists in his, he muttered the last unlocking spell, and summoned his owl, a piece of paper and a quill. He scribbled something quick and sent the bird off. He slammed the door shut with a movement of his hand and sat on my bed.

"What are you doing?" I interrupted his silence from the bubble of air where I lay, "how long do you think you'll be able to keep this up? What are you going to do when we leave this place?

"Nothing, I've already taken care of that," he said, laying back with his hands behind his head.

"What are you talking about?" I frowned.

"I've got a house in town, pretty close to where you applied for."

"And you just expect me to move there out of my free will, do you?"

"If you don't I'll make you, the wards of your institute are easy enough."

"What if I don't go there?" I asked perplexed.

"You, Hermione Granger, smarter witch of Hogwarts," he slurred, "be denied a place there when every other institute is willing to pay to have the likes of you?"

"No, Draco, what if I can't go, as is most likely to happen, even before the school is over. What if the war starts?" I clarified.

"Then you'll just go live there, it's safe enough. No one will find you there."

"Do you really think you can stop me from fighting?" I turned befuddled on my bubble.

"I'll tie you to the bed if I have to," he promised me.

"Draco, you might be stronger than me," I spoke evenly, "you might be able to make me want you more than it's humanly possible, and even teach me dark spells I never bothered to learn, but where magic is involved I can overpower you and I promise you I will if you ever try to stop me."

"Then I'll just have to keep you busy, won't I?" he slyly answered.

"You won't get a chance," I whispered back.

"So sure of yourself, are you?" he raised an eyebrow.

"I've been fighting this war longer than you can imagine."

He laughed, and taking a more comfortable stance under the bubble he said, "for someone who found out she's a witch when she was eleven, you surely make a lot of assumptions, don't you?"

I turned to look at him underneath me. "Didn't you just say I was the smartest witch in Hogwarts? And yet I did find out about this world when I was eleven, didn't I; how do you think I came to muster the arts better than you, per say?"

"…Says the witch who just learned a couple of spells from me."

"Dark spells," I reminded him.

"Yes, dark spells, how many of those do you think I know? How many of those you think I could place on you, how many have I already used?"

I turned bewildered eyes at him, "you wouldn't have dared…"

"I'm already thinking of the ones I'll place on you next; for starters, I don't think that being able to sense your location whenever I want is quiet enough."

"Draco, don't! You can't do that without my consent!"

"Oh, face it," he rolled his eyes, "if we had your consent for everything I did to you, we'd be me missing out in so much…" His eyes travelled hungrily over me. He lifted himself up to trespass the air bubble, "It's such a shame I can't play with you right now," he hissed before stealing a hungry kiss from me.

It made me dizzy, it made me tingle all over, he made it long and passionate, I couldn't help the hand that caught his neck to pull him closer, I wouldn't have stopped there if it wasn't for the hiss that erupted from my lips as a searing pain shot from my forearm. I'd open up a wound with one of his buttons and stained his shirt in the process. He cursed for the hundredth time that evening and summoned the salve again.

He put the salve back in the drawer and claimed back the position beneath my bubble. He took a long time staring at me before he finally asked.

"What happened?"

I remained quiet, dwelling on answering at all. Not really thinking it was a safe idea.

"I can find out one way or another, this is the best way for both of us," he reminded me.

"Why, why do you want to know?"

"I just healed you, didn't I? I want to know what caused it."

"Will you do anything if I tell you?"

"I'm going to do a hell of lot of things whether you tell me or not," he promised me, "_this_ is just the easiest way for both of us."

I breathed. "I was attacked," I swallowed.

"How many?" he whispered.

"Five."

He clenched his teeth, "Where?"

"In the dungeons"

"Where in the dungeons, Granger?"

"I don't know, at least a few corridors away from where you found me; I was trying to find Justin, I thought I was taking a shortcut but it was a dead end so I tried to get back and there they were."

"Finch-Fletchley?" he asked with murder in his voice.

"Yes, Draco, I needed to tell him I wasn't going to go tonight because I couldn't very well dump him and then go to his party, now could I?" I annoyingly answered.

"Why the dungeons then…?"

"I don't know, I never found him, he might have been trying to get some booze for tonight. I casted a spell and that's where it led me."

"I'm going to kill the slug anyway," he sneered.

"No, you are not! If you so much as touch a hair on him I'll take him up on his offer just to spite you!"

"If you so much as breathe the same air as that insufferable git, Granger, or any other idiot for that matter, I'll do much worse than just kill them. They'll wish they'd never been born!"

"Draco, he didn't do anything!" I pushed, "why would you do anything to hurt him!"

"He asked you out, it was his fault you were there; you were looking for him."

"He asked an otherwise _single_ girl out, where is the harm in that?" I asked

"I don't care if he starts asking the entire population of Hogwarts out, he can start asking engaged girls if he wants, I care if he asks YOU out. You are completely out of his league."

"He's my friend, there's nothing out of league about that, and I'll remind you, the entire population of Hogwarts and the engaged ones include your girlfriend."

"Well good riddance if he chooses her, he'd give me an excuse to have mother put her off my case."

"You could put her off your case on your own!"

"Like you said, you've only lived in this world for so long."

I glared at him, "then, please, Draco, enlighten me, what's stopping you?"

"I don't have a good reason to dump the chit and I need one if I don't want my parents meddling any more than they already are! I'm their only son; I have to carry on the name!"

"You do have someone to carry your stupid name with! And you do have a good reason, damn it. I am reason enough!" I yelled at him, hating my tear-filled eyes as I did so.

"They would kill you, if they so much as suspected I deflowered you, Granger, let alone kept a relationship with you!"

"Oh, please!" I shouted, "let them be added to the list of people that want me dead. They might even make it next to your aunt, or perhaps even as far as behind Voldemort, himself!" I ran a hand through my hair, "and you haven't kept a relationship with me, what we have is not a relationship at all."

"You didn't think that before Astoria and things haven't changed much since then, if not for your constant brooding. And I'll remind you, you have never been the object of a direct attack, yes they all want you dead, and you can already add my father to that list, but none of them have ever _needed_ you dead."

"Well, shouldn't I thank Greengrass for bursting my bubble and opening my eyes, if it wasn't for her, I'd still be deluded into thinking you cared! And tell me, if I wasn't the object of a direct attack, what was that that got your father imprisoned! What was that, that happened to me today?" I screamed pointing to my injuries. "And I don't care about any of those, they are not going to be my lasts, and if I had to add your parents to my peril, I wouldn't care either!" I was crying again. "But that's just not it, is it?" I swallowed, "Even without all of them you'd never have the balls to ask me out in public."

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said turning back my face to glare at me, "I'll spare your _friend_ – he gritted the word – but you have to tell me everything that happened today."

I glared at him and swallowed my sorrow.

"One of them said they couldn't believe their luck at finding me there" I breathed, "his voice was distorted, the rest of their faces were indistinguishable. I tried to pull my wand out but they took it before I got to it so I ran, I kicked one out of the way and turned around the corner the same way I'd come. A spell hit me on the back and I fell before I could get to the portrait I was trying to reach. One of them got to me and told the others to hurry, he said they didn't have much time, but they did, they took a long time just trying to get rid of my clothes." I shoved my tears with the back of my hand.

"That wasn't it," he said. My inquiring eyes forced him to elaborate. "They weren't going to have enough time if everyone wanted to have a go at it." He changed the subject as I took in what he'd just said, my disgust evident in my dread. "You said you hit one of them to scape, where did you hit him, how tall were they; what did they look like?"

I sniffed back my tears, "Three of them were almost as tall as you, the one I kicked was a head shorter, and the last one was burlier but just as tall as the rest; he was slower and more disgusting. As soon as they rounded me up, they started to get rid of their outfits, but as soon as he reached the same spot he started groping me. The guy holding me from behind, the one who trapped me told him to stop because all the mauling was getting him too since I was twitching and kicking to get them off, but he laughed him off so the guy on my back just turned me to him and left. He pushed me up the wall and continued." I gritted my teeth in silence, "Someone tapped on his shoulder and told him to move away to get his turn because _he_ was ready. That was when they started with the cuts, he tried to rip my clothes off and when he couldn't, he tried vanishing them, he was the first to try to burn them, before someone shoved him off…"

He made me tell him every detail of the curses they used, every scratch I'd given, every part on their robes, until the object he'd been holding caught on fire and he vanished the ashes from his hands.


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer:**Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this

Draco's owl arrived with the ointment soon after our conversation; he asked if I wanted to use it to send a message, so I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote:

Harry,

I couldn't find Justin or tell him, I think I've caught something and it's probably better if I stay bedridden for a few days. Don't worry about me, I won't be accepting any visits any time soon; I think it might be contagious.

Love

H.

The new ointment glued to me drying like a second skin, it allowed me to lie on the bed without the need of the bubble of air. At some point during my sleep I ended up cuddled against him, his scent invading my system as intoxicating as ever. I blamed it on him that I started dreaming about him, he always invaded my dreams when I was alone, how was I to avoid it when I had him so close.

It was his fault and it was absolutely disconcerting to me when his name on my lips woke him up and in turn woke me up with a passionate kiss of his own, right before rushing to the bathroom door for a cold shower.

I had half a mind to see if he was alright, but right before I limped out of bed he came out, looking as delicious as ever.

"Are you okay?" I asked, already feeling stupid for asking.

He assented with a court movement of his head.

"What was that?" I continued.

"Shouldn't I be asking that question?"

I regretted my nosey nature, what was it with me and questions, didn't I know they could backfire at me at any point?

"Nothing," I answered, trying to cover up my blushing cheeks; where was that infamous hair when I needed it the most? Oh, right, in a ponytail, prevented from messing up my healing, darn it.

He was somehow kneeling in front of me, taking a stray curl behind my ear, his finger lingering down my earlobe and tracing a pattern down my throat. "_Nothing_ sounded pretty good when you said my name. Thrice…"

_Thrice? Really? Couldn't you have stopped me sooner? _But my thoughts were swiftly distracted by his luscious lips coming dangerously closer to mine. "Are you sure you can't tell me what _nothing _was?" he whispered in my lips right before he took them in one of those enthralling kisses of his, I couldn't think of dignity or shame, of right or wrong when he kissed me like that.

"What were you dreaming?" he whispered again.

"You," I breathed, "I was dreaming of you."

He traced his lips along my jaw, "mhm, What was I doing?"

"You were on me." He nibbled. I shuddered.

"Where?"

"A tree, ngn!" he bit me, "You had me pressed against a tree."

He went for my earlobe, and after licking it, asked me, "what else?"

"You were kissing me, touching me, you were… ah!" He bit me again and whispering in the recently moistened area, he asked, "Why were you calling my name?"

"nhgn… because we were in public, I needed you, I wanted you, I had to-" he kissed me, hard and passionate, hungrily, possessively, exquisitely…

But just as suddenly as he'd kissed me, he disappeared. When I opened my eyes he was no longer there and I could hear the shower running again.

I sighed in frustration and tried to use my feet to stand up to no avail, I hurt all over. I grabbed my wand and taking a hold of the poster I levitated myself until I was in a fully stand-up position without my feet really touching the floor. I glided all the way to the bathroom door, taking hold of the panel to keep me steady. He was just leaving the shower and drying his face with a towel when he opened the curtains, drops of water still running through his perfect body, I couldn't avoid following their path with hungry eyes from head to toe and back. I smirked when I saw him erected again, he gave a frustrated groan and a whispered profanity left his lips.

"You're not going to take a third shower, are you?"

"I think it would be pointless with you standing there." I glided closer still, unable to resist.

"I could do more than just stand here," I whispered closing my lips to his, he moaned. I found it funny and incredibly alluring the way he was holding back. He was trying to control himself and not touch; I touched instead, pulling myself closer still to deepen the kiss.

I licked every drop of his neck until he couldn't take it anymore; with a groan, he pulled me back up to his lips, and kissed me back just as furiously. My hands found their way to his hair, and I sighed in pleasure as he pushed forwards still. I tried to lift my knee up to hook it beneath his hip, only to be harshly reminded I couldn't really move them now. He didn't miss my hiss of pain, and he pushed himself back harshly trying to see where I was hurt. It was only my good reflexes that made me recover my balance after his sudden departure but I still staggered a little in the air, bumping my left feet over the floor for a moment, it was enough to have him cursing himself and asking if I was alright.

I assented with a short smile, taking hold of the counter behind me to steady me. He was still flustered and running a hand through his hair and I was staring at his worried attitude as if trying to break from the daze.

No, he didn't care. I repeated and forced myself out of the room. "Wait! Let me help you. I'm sorry." He sounded conflicted.

"It's ok, Draco, I came here by myself I'm perfectly capable of leaving as well," I told him softly, already reaching the bed and lowering myself to it. I summoned one of the loose soft garments I owned and tried to pull it over my head when he stopped me.

"You don't need to do that," he said.

I looked at him for a moment and asked, "What is it? What is it about your blood that makes it so special?"

He looked at me confused. "Why am I so different from the likes of you?" I insisted.

He seemed clueless but obliged me, "for starters," he said slowly, "you're a Griffindor-" I cut him off, it wasn't that what I needed to hear.

"So I'm brave, that's not it. If it was Parvati you wouldn't be as afflicted about everyone knowing."

"No, I wouldn't be; she wouldn't be killed for being with me; I wouldn't care if she was anyway."

"Then, tell me, what is it about my blood that has you tipping over broken glass."

"You know what it is about your blood," he stated with a careful look on my face. It hurt, and I quickly pulled over the dress to mar the sting grumbling in my chest. It wasn't enough, I needed to hear it.

"No, tell me, Draco, to me, my blood is just that, another fluid running in my body, like every other human being, except mine is magical. So no, you see? I don't really know."

"You're so stubborn," he sighed, "you, you stroll up like you own the place, and you do, you're passionate about everything, you're kind, and loyal to a fault, so pure and yet so tainted, you're everything I can't have and yet I have you, you're mine. And yet I can't so I have to-, I can't lose you, you can't be over-"

"Draco! Just tell me. Why do I have to hide the fact I love you, why do you have to treat me like the dirt you walk on when everyone's around. You can do it; you surely can tell me why."

He remained quiet for the longest of times, just staring at me as if unable to swallow in. "Why?" I pressed on, looking straight into his eyes goading him to tell me the truth I needed to hear. "Why?" I yelled.

"Because I can't lose you,"

"Wrong, Draco! Wrong! Don't excuse yourself with your pathetic lies! You don't deserve to hide behind them, you don't love me! You never will, you can't even understand the beginning of it. When tha- that, when your girlfriend wasn't around I only hid because I didn't want to hurt my friends, it never even crossed my mind to question your motives, it never crossed my mind to think about why you kept your distance when your friends were around. You! You didn't even think of what it'd do to me to see you with her! You keep my feelings at bay because you can't deal with them! If you loved me, if you'd at least felt the smallest of feelings towards me, you wouldn't have kept me around, you just hide in your excuses whenever you see me hurt, you don't even treat me like a human being! What is it you plan for me, huh? Tell me again how the best you could think for me was making me your harlot! What will I be in your perfect universe? What will you do if your lord wins, do you really think he'll let you keep me as what? …Your slave? Do you really think he'll let his enemy's best friend out of the loop so easily? I can't even begin to tell you how deluded you are, but I can tell you this, Draco. If you cared, you wouldn't have made me hide."

He remained quiet the whole time, trying to swallow back the tears that were threatening to come out. "So what is it if it's now or later? You'll have to do it eventually. Just let me go, you can't keep stranding me forever."

"I can't," he whispered, barely above a whisper.

"Then I'll hurt you too!" I hissed.

"You can do that," he quietly whispered back.


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer:**Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this

The first time I had my lips around someone else I was numbed, I embedded in my mind every memory I had of them kissing, every time I saw her hold his hand, every whisper, every touch I had of them to fuel me. I kissed him fully, I let him deepen it, I didn't feel the same rush of blood as when I kissed _him_ but I still lifted my hand to his face as I lightly caressed his cheek; the way I'd dreamt of touching _him _in public.

"Gee, Hermione, it's one thing you had to impose a Slytherin on us, but do we really have to see you do this before breakfast? I feel I've lost my appetite and I haven't even made it to the table."

"Well, the fact you're still going to the table should be incentive enough, Harry, I was just saying goodbye before Kevin went for breakfast," I answered, detaching myself from strong arms and bidding him adieu with a smile that didn't reach my eyes. He didn't care nor noticed, he had a blissful smirk plastered on his features. I chose him carefully, the Slytherin keeper didn't even play hard to get; he didn't even put much thought into what would happen to his pureblood arse if he started a relationship with me. He had laughed it out pushing a strand of hair out of my face and told me I would be worth it, unaware of how he was deepening the crack in my chest by so readily accepting.

I was good at ignoring Draco the way he ignored me, I was sure to have Bletchley – I still struggled to use his name – to have Kevin, walk me from and to every class. I wondered if it was a Slytherin trait to be as possessive when he readily put a hand in my back. I kept him safe as long as I could, by keeping him in public places or at least as far away from Draco as I could.

However, that kiss was the final straw and not even ten steps away; Kevin was flying back towards one of the walls.

"You filthy little piece of shit!" Draco roared, cornering him next to the door.

Kevin smirked, "Don't give me your crap, Malfoy, you're just jealous I got to her first. Don't think I haven't seen the way you look at her! You want her as much as every bloke in the table does!"

Kevin had just chosen the worst things to say, who could blame the poor sod. I could imagine how Draco's face was contorted in fury before I heard him start his curse, "CRUC-"

"Expelliarmus!" I yelled, catching his wand in the air and pulling Draco off Kevin. If looks could kill, Kevin would have burned to ashes. "Come on, Draco, this kind of display is not befitting of a head boy, but I won't rattle you out if you let him go now," I told him, his murderous glares never once leaving the boy behind me. "Harry, can you take Kevin to the infirmary ward, make sure there's nothing wrong with him, please," I said aloud, watching Draco's glare follow him out of the door.

"Now," I whispered to the boy in front of me, "you're going to calm yourself, and tell her not to worry, probably let her kiss those angry wrinkles you're starting to form; but I won't be here to watch. What kind of person would I be if I don't go to check on my boyfriend myself?" As if on cue, she appeared right then to prove my point. I was out the door the second she took hold of him.

I didn't see a hair of him until that night, right after making sure Bletchley was safely heading back to his dorms. It was shocking to find the common room so dark, not even the fireplace was on. Finding him like that was unexpected, but the roar that left his lips brought me back to common ground.

"Where the hell have you been!" he stalked me like a fierce predator would his pray.

"Where I said I'd be," I calmly replied, "just now I made sure he got back to his quarters safely."

"Why the fuck- why are you, why did you-" he punched the door behind me.

"What's the matter, Draco, you don't like being in the receiving end?"

He heaved, his face buried in my neck. "You kissed him." It was barely above a whisper, and filled with as much emotion as I'd ever heard him have.

"I didn't just kiss him," I started, I wanted to tell him all I'd put into that kiss, I wanted him to know how that was the kiss I always dreamt I'd have with him. He cut me off by kissing me back, furiously, passionately, painfully.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up," he begged between the kisses, and I could taste the salt of his tears in my mouth.

He dragged me to his room and closed the door behind him. I can't describe the way he took me, the way I felt his rage, his pain. That sense of betrayal I knew all too well, present in every touch he gave me. I can't really explain how I felt him break beneath my hands, how breaking his heart made me feel inside, how unfair I thought it was that even my revenge made me hurt for him.

He took a long time to finish, and then watched me sleep in his arms. I don't know how long it took him to fall asleep as well, he still had a possessive hold of me when I woke up. I carefully climbed off his bed to claim the showers. I wasn't really expecting him to overreact the way he did. It didn't occur to me how he'd take my absence in the bed. His face of relief when he harshly opened the showers was confusing, but the way he took me in his arms, pants and all getting wet, the way he kissed me and held me as if- no, I wouldn't say it.

After the kiss was over, he pulled my hair off the way, kissed the top of my nose. He put shampoo on my hair and helped me wash it, he rubbed the sponge on my back hugging me as he did so, he turned the tab off when I was done and wrapped a towel around my body; he helped me out of the shower. He spelled his pants dry and everything he wetted with them, and made a point of not letting me go again.

"Draco," I broke the silence at some point.

"Shh…" he said.

"The world is not going to go away just because you deem it so." He kept quiet, breathing in the back of my head.

"He doesn't care," he whispered after a while.

"I know," I told him, "he also said I was worth getting in trouble for."

"He doesn't like you the way I do," he continued, "I wanted to kill him; he didn't mind getting you in trouble," I thought I'd heard him sniff, "I had to take care of that. And yes you are worth killing for, Hermione."

No, he wouldn't, I reminded myself. "Draco, it's getting late."

"I can make sure you never sleep with him, with anyone else, ever, not even another one of your blasted kisses."

"But you won't, Draco. I won't see you walk her to the isle; I can't bear the thought of her taking you from me. You've had a taste of what it feels like, I don't think I'd survive to see her pregnant, you have to leave me a loop hole out of all this."

His hold of me tightened, "I'm sorry," he whispered.

I let him keep the silence for a while longer, "please tell me you won't go back to him today," he pleaded.

"I just needed you to understand, Draco. I won't need him any more if you let me go."

"Is that what it takes?"

"I know you won't leave her. I just, I can't look at you anymore. It's always there, her touches, her kisses. You even smell of her sometimes. I know she knows about me even if she doesn't know who I am. I can't do this anymore. You're never going to be mine, you never really were."

"It's not what you think it is."

"It doesn't matter what it is, it hurts the same."

"I'd give anything in the world for her to be you."

"I would give everything too just to have you risk it the way he so readily did."

"He doesn't care."

"It doesn't matter, does it?" I lifted myself up.

"Not yet," he begged. "Just let me hold you a bit longer."

I did, and right before it was time he said, "I need to have you one more time, just one last time before I let you go."

"It's not going to do you any good."

"I don't care."

"We don't have time."

"Not now. Just, accept. I'll take care of everything."

I turned to look at him confused, but looking at him didn't make me feel any more certain. I nodded.


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer:**Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this

He didn't come for me that night, or the night after, even the week after; he waited until the Hogsmade weekend to let me know of his plans; made me promise I'd tell my friends I wouldn't be able to join them and not to expect me the rest of the weekend either.

He kidnapped me on Friday night and didn't let me go until Monday morning. He took me on his broom to Apparate away. It was midnight where he took me, but there were still open restaurants in Muggle Paris. It was the way I dreamt it. He held my hand throughout dinner, we talked about all the sights he wanted to show me, I explained every muggle contraption we stumbled on, we used the underground to get to the tower, I blushed when a turn made me stumble on him. He smiled his perfect smile while he held me and kissed my hand in front of all to see.

The sight of the tower was mesmerizing but Saturday had us in Rome. He woke me up earlier than I would have wished with fluttering kisses that had me writhing and begging under his lips. He made me swear it didn't count even if he used his tongue to lick me clean and then had me begging some more just for the heck of it. By the time I came, the way he licked me clean had me all bothered again. He smirked during our entire walks.

On our last day together, I woke up in his room. It was filled with candles and he had breakfast ready on a corner table. It was in that scenery that he ravished me whole. He made me beg for repetitions, made me promise I would indulge him with a stay overnight. He spent the time between cuddling me and whispering how much I meant for him, to how much he felt for me; how he wished he could make my life be what he'd made me see that weekend. But eventually, he joined me in silence, until I had to leave. At the end, he didn't say anything, he didn't move, just stared at the empty bed as I closed the door behind me. He didn't show up for classes that day.

Two months went by before he pulled me into a cupboard again.

"Draco?" I whispered into the dark.

"There was an attack, Hermione, I'm so sorry," he gulped. "They wiped out your entire neighbourhood."

I could tell how afraid he'd been to give me the news by the edge on his voice, how my lack of response to what-weren't-news-to-my-side was making him feel.

"Hermione," he asked, goading me to talk.

"Draco," I breathed, "the last trace of my parents was extinguished in a few piles of ashes in my room. I guess I have to thank you for that because it's what's detained them for the past month. We predicted they'd eventually find out about the whereabouts of my house and be done with it, I made sure the exact address was never known, you see? We took everyone to safety for the night. It's been a bit hectic but we're managing to cover it up."

I could feel his short-lived reprieve by the way he pressed his front against mine. "That, that's great," he gulped, "your parents were only bait though. They'll be coming for you next. You have to, you need to leave."

I couldn't help the twitch of guilt that invaded me. I knew how hard it was for him to have me gone. Up until now he spent every chance he got watching over me, he'd become addicted to my naps and even made a habit of spending the night concealed in my room. He wasn't going to take my departure very well.

"I take your silence means you've already thought about it," he sighed. "Do you have a place to go?"

"Draco," I started but he cut me off.

"Good, you don't have to tell me. I'm a liability. I can't be sure this isn't because they found out about that Kevin thing or if they know about us. Maybe I should take the spell off you as well," he started rambling.

"Draco," I called his attention, not really knowing what to do with it next. He looked on the verge of a break down, desperate, conflicted. "You can keep the spell on," I started, "knowing I'm safe and sound will be ok." He exhaled a breath of relief. "I wish I could take you with me," I whispered. "It's not your fault," I continued; "you should know that, you couldn't have helped it. It was bound to happen sooner or later."

"What do you know?" he asked me.

"I know they'll come asking you to join the ranks soon enough," I answered, "and I know that it will keep you marriage-free for that much longer, and I won't hold it against you, when you do."

"It's started then," he whispered, I could see him mulling over the implications, "You're going to fight."

"I never really had a choice, Draco, the fact he decided to start the war making an example out of me makes it unavoidable, don't you think?"

"It's Potter's-"

"Do you really think that if he wasn't my friend, I'd be any less notorious? The fact he is my friend, Draco, just gives me a better chance of survival," I interrupted him.

"You don't have to fight."

"I can't let the people I love be slaughtered in my behalf, and there's nothing you can say or do that's going to change that."

"When?"

"They'll probably contact you next week."

"Hermione..." He groaned in that desperate, pleading tone.

"Tomorrow," I answered quietly, "I was going to tell you I, just wanted to wait a bit longer. It wasn't going to do you any good if Tonks found you hiding in my room."

"Tonks, Nymphadora Tonks? "

"She's going to polyjuice into myself tomorrow."

"The last minute was going to be when?"

"Before midnight."

"How long?"

"Draco," I pleaded, "you're not the only one in this-" I pointed to us; I didn't know what to dub what we had.

"And that's why you're going to tell your friends you won't be available 'till it's time today, you're going to tell them you've decided it will be better to play the mourning witch in the confines of your chambers because you don't want to risk screwing it up."

"You know I need to leave, you said it yourself, Draco!"

"It's one thing to have you go into hiding, and another completely different, to have you go into war."

"Ok," I relented, "I'll tell them. But we have to eventually leave this cupboard."

We did leave the cupboard, and he lent me his owl to write to my friends, then he asked to go through the things I'd take. He charmed every object to be able to be summoned by my magic and taught me how to summon them when trapped. He added a spell to every piece of clothing he found and explained to me how it would avoid a repetition of what had happened a few months ago, and made it clear that it was by no means to be used as a shield because it would not work that way.

Then he taught me how to identify where the wards of magical houses were located, what their source was and how they were prone to harm intruders.

He said that in most cases they couldn't be taken down, but that the information would be useful. Then he showed me how the wards of his house worked and gave me a sample of his blood to use it if I ever needed to get out of there. "If just a drop is needed, why are you giving me all of this?" I asked, receiving the flask of crimson liquids in my hands.

"You never know when it might come in hand," he replied, while looking for god-knows-what in his trunk. "Draco, you don't just give away samples of your blood because it might be handy. It's raw magic."

"I'm not just handing them out, I gave one to you."

"It's traceable, if I use it to escape, it will get back to you."

"I'll tell them we got into a fight; it never would occur to me that a prisoner would know how to use my blood to escape, much less a muggleborn prisoner. It's never happened before."

"They won't let you off the hook that easily."

"It will hardly matter. Here! I found it!" He pulled out a black leathered book with not a sign of inscription anywhere. "You're going to need this too."

"It's dark magic." I might have sounded more repulsed than I meant to.

"It's not all that bad, at least not all of them are. Besides, you need to know what your average Death Eater can have at his disposal. Just read it so you know what kind of mistakes not to make, you're very prone to leave behind the kind of trinket that could get you tracked."

I reluctantly accepted his point, looking at the book as the carrier of a strange disease. "So, are you going to give it to me at some point?"

"As soon as I find what I need..." he mumbled to himself. "Page thirty four, sixty one…" he muttered, used his wand to bookmark it and copied a script in a piece of parchment that he left in his nightstand.

Out of the blue, he muttered some ancient runes with his back at me. I could see his wand pointed at his chest, so I quickly stood up and rounded on him but I was too late. He was sprawled into the wall, the book on the floor, his wand still in a tight fist in his hand. His chest was bleeding.

"Draco!" I ran to him, opening up his shirt with a fluid movement of my wrist to reveal an open wound below his left shoulder. "I'll go get Pomfrey!" I told him in a hurry.

"No time. The book. Quick." He coughed blood. His pained voice didn't hide the sense of anticipation I could hear in his tone. I summoned the book, and opened it to find the page I'd heard him mutter but I couldn't see anything. "What do you want me to do with it?" I exclaimed desperately. "It doesn't say anything. It's blank to me."

"I want you to save me," he swallowed hard and quietly summoned a piece of paper. It came flying from his nightstand but only made it half way. It scared me how weak he was. "Read it," he rasped.

I brought it in front of the book and read the incantation; the letters became suddenly clear. "Sixty one, third paragraph," he weakly whispered.

I went through the pages with shaking hands, not fast enough to my liking. I didn't even read the title, just went straight to the paragraph and chanted it.

"Good," he whispered, "again." So I read. "Nh - need your blood," he softly rasped, with an absurd smile on his face, before he sputtered blood again. I lay the book on the floor, keeping it open with one knee and took my wand out towards my hand. "On the wound," he said, and I used my wand to cut my palm after I finished the paragraph, and started it again.

His wound started to close with each drop until there was just a slash of it by the fifth time I read it, he sealed it with a whispered word, it made his whole body glow.

I felt tired enough to faint, but I held on long enough to see him smile proudly at me. I could have smacked it out of his face then but the world of the unconscious claimed me right there.


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer:**Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this

The fact he used a reviving spell to wake me up wasn't lost on me, I accepted the pepper-up potion that followed only because I did need the extra strength to inflict the kind of pain I wanted him to feel when I punched him. And I did punch him.

"What the fuck was all that?" I roared, only to be welcomed with a warm smirk from a bloody lip, if a smirk could be called warm at all.

"It was your ticket out," he said, and I'll take great pride in succeeding at restraining from striking again. "You didn't really expect me to let you leave on a deadly mission just like that?" he added.

"Let me? LET ME! You are not _letting_ me do anything! I do and act as I _please_. It's my life and mine alone! What the fuck did you do?"

"I let you save my life," he calmly answered.

"What? Are you out of your fucking mind? You blew your chest out! You, you almost committed suicide, Draco! What the heck is wrong with you? You were bleeding to death!"

"I knew I could trust you."

"Trust me! …Trust, Draco? Do you even know what that word means? You- you conniving, deceitful bastard!"

He was still smiling. I wanted to cry.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't mean to scare you."

"Scare me? Scare me? You were DYING for Christ sakes! Scaring me doesn't even begin to cover it!" I hit him on the chest once more.

He had the gall to try to hug me. "What the hell – punch – is wrong – punch – with you? – punch."

He was hugging me. The unbelievable son of a gun even had the cheek to wipe a tear off my face. "Sh…" he said, before pulling me into a kiss that had me hiccupping in his mouth. "It's ok, it's all going to be ok. I promise," he said in between the kisses. As if his word held any meaning at all, I thought, while the bastard had me in a mess of tears that he was attempting to kiss away.

He held me until I calmed down, and then some more.

"Why?" I broke the silence.

"I needed a life debt for it to work," he whispered back.

"For_ what_ to work?"

"That, you'll have to figure out on your own when you read the book; it's the only way I can ensure you'll read it."

I turned the heat of my glare towards him. "You won't need the incantation to read it anymore, the book just requires you to use it to grant you access."

"_Grant_ me access," I stressed the word, "that thing _granted_ me access?" I spat remembering the panic I felt when I opened the book to find blank pages.

"Leave it to you to get it with that particular spell," he added somewhat amused.

"And you couldn't think of that before you blasted your chest?" I accused.

"I did have the incantation ready."

"You made me _need_ the incantation," I reminded him.

"Well, it's not like you would have let me talk you into using a spell from a book like that."

I rolled my eyes at his absurd pretext while he continued to feel amused with my reactions.

We spent the rest of our time together in a close embrace.

I would find out a few months later what his stunt was all for, when I finished the book and reread it twice because I couldn't belief his idiocy and his nerve. His idiocy for he had indebted his life to me so I could drain his life if mine was ever at risk, and his nerve because the curse was based on our union, a union he believed existed due to the fact he had been my first and swore he'd be my only one. The worse of it was that the spell actually acknowledged his claim as good enough foundation because if it hadn't, he wouldn't have been able to seal it with a golden glow. It would have been crimson light. I almost wished it had, to prove I was right, the whole thing felt like he'd taken some sort of stake over me.

That among many spells I found out he had on me after careful examination of the book, had me reeling at the thought of him. It wasn't long after they recruited him though, and I felt ashamed at being relieved when he accepted, because it meant he'd be single for that much longer. I knew it would cost him his soul and his freedom if this war ever ended like we hoped it would.

It was good though, because he had access to information that saved our lives in more opportunities than I dared to count. It was a relief to know that in all that time he'd used his involvement with Voldemort as an excuse not to visit her or his parents; it broke me apart too because I could see how much it haunted him. He must have aged ten years during the months he was forced to do the despicable things he was commanded to. It hunted me to think of what each slipped piece of information he used to save me actually cost him.

The first time he appeared with a crack in front of me, I thought he was a figment of my imagination; he trapped me and apparated away to what I would later learn, was the house he had gotten close to my institute. The first time, he used it to tell me they were planning a trap to lure us in, and that it involved killing the Weasleys to get to us; he hadn't expected me to protect them, just wanted me not to heed the trap, and therefore hadn't expected the whole plan to go awry until it did.

Although his surprise was genuine when he and the rest of his Death Eater group didn't find the Weasleys where they were supposed to, he ended up receiving the wrath and punishment of his lord anyways. He learned later on, to prepare a cover before slipping me information, I learned to risk my friends in order to save his cover as well, I knew sometimes he didn't get a chance to blame someone else for his deeds and he still did them.

I knew he paid dearly for each time he abandoned entire battles because he felt me hurt.

In one of these occasions, in which I'd been wounded, he kidnapped me from the fight and carried me to his shelter house. He placed me on the couch, went for the door he kicked shut and started throwing locking spells in case anyone followed his apparition.

"Are you still using that spell?" I'd asked when I recognized the conjugal spell.

"It works, doesn't it?"

"You shouldn't rely on it"

"Why not?" He asked, walking back towards me.

"Because one of these days it's not going to work, and it's going to come bite you in the arse."

"That's not going to happen," he'd stated, but it was only two weeks later that it stopped working and in the worst possible of moments.


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer:**Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this

It was only a few days after I warned him, that I found out about his public engagement. I had placed on him one of the protective charms he kept on me using a few drops of the blood he'd given me. It was only to know he was safe because, just like I knew he couldn't enter our locations warded by a secret keeper; I couldn't access his either. Every time I felt him being punished, I had to wait with the heart on my sleeve until he Apparated back to his shelter. This time, was no different. He was a bloodied mess when he appeared in front of me. It took me nearly all night to bring him back to health.

I was practically on my way out when I stumbled with it. The announcement of his wedding was glaring at me from the front page of the Daily Prophet lying on the table. The date set was but a month away.

I'd been numbed to many horrors by then, but the picture of her holding his hand still had me looking for a place to sit before I broke apart.

I must have stared at the picture for what felt like hours, staring at the ring in her left hand like it had personally assaulted me. The picture had her waving back at the crowd leaving the ministry with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes while Draco looked as stoic as ever. I glared at her image and her fake smile; what right did she have to take everything I wanted for myself and not be overthrown by the joy. She was going to have him, why wasn't she exuding with happiness like I'd be. Why was she taking him from me if she didn't want him?

I didn't realize I had started crying until I felt him brush a tear out of my cheek. He had the most sorrowful expression I had seen him wear. Sorry, didn't quite described what he portrayed. He seemed defeated. He was unable to look me in the eye and thought he'd hide it focusing on my hands. I gulped down the bile I had stuck in my throat and tried to say that I needed to leave; all that came out was sob. I tried to stand up and head for the door, but he caught me in what felt a desperate attempt to keep me at his side.

"Don't go, not like this, please," he begged. I felt too tired to move so I let him lead me back to bed and hold me there until I calmed down.

"So, it's official then," I whispered, "date and everything?"

He took a long time to answer, "I delayed it as much as I could, but mother's afraid that with the battles and all I could become a casualty, Father doesn't want to risk it."

I turned around horrified at the way he spoke, only to find him already reassuring me that he was going to be fine.

"Please, don't." I hated the way my voice sounded like begging.

"I can't risk them knowing the truth."

"Draco, they're already after me. This would be the tip of the iceberg. I can take care of myself."

"They would use me to lure you. I'd rather die, and you would still come."

"I can hide you; you know our location is impenetrable, please."

"Potter wouldn't have me that easily, not after what I've done; it's enough for you to be disappointed in me. I'll leave your friends alone."

I cried myself to sleep and once at headquarters I buried in the plans for the final battle. I wouldn't see him until then. The day I retracted on everything I'd told him up until that point.

We were fighting Voldemort when I took a curse meant for Harry. I hit my head against the trunk of a tree and the pain was what kept me up that much longer, watching my friends retaliate with all the fury in the world had me smiling, hoping to live long enough to see the bastard dead. Until I saw him, until I saw his pale face take a despicable shade of terror. I don't remember seeing him as scared in my life. It made me ache for him.

"Why isn't it working?" he asked frantically, "Why am I not feeling any weaker?"

"Shh…" I tried to appease him. He was desperately looking at my wounds until a flash of light crossed near and he decided to apparate me away. The apparition didn't go well with my lungs and I ended up coughing what was left of them while he summoned the book he'd once given me. He tried sealing the spell once again but instead of the golden glow it had once had on him, it shone of crimson blood instead.

It didn't take long for me to realize that after Draco had made his engagement to another woman official with the ministry and the whole world, the foundation in which Draco had based the curse had been rebuffed.

I cursed myself for ever wishing this happened. I couldn't bear to see him hurt the way he did now. It didn't take long for him to reach the same conclusion I had, and curse the heavens and everything in it.

"No! No! You can't! No!" he roared, not bothering to hide the tears or sobs in his face, "It was all for you! It can't take you away from me, you can't go!"

"shh…" I tried to calm him, reaching a hand to bring him near, he was sobbing on my chest. "It's wrong, Draco, you were right, it just doesn't know how much I love you, you were right, love, you were always right. I was always yours – always will be, you were my first and my last, and you'll always have me. Even when you can't touch me or see me, I'll always be there, inside your heart, the way you always were in mine, you were always right, Draco."

He started shaking his head and burrowed it in the crook of my neck, whispering no, a thousand times, "I can't," he gulped down as he drew himself up. "I can't see you die, you can't die!" It hurt to see him beg me for something I couldn't give him. "I love you! Isn't that enough, I've always loved you, isn't the fact I couldn't have you punishment enough! Why? Why isn't it enough?"

"It is enough, Draco, it just doesn't know it. It's going to be ok, love; you're going to be ok." I cried softly, it felt so horrible to leave him like that and yet I felt slipping sooner each time. I wanted to keep my eyes open but felt I couldn't control them anymore, barely felt him shift over me before everything went black.


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer:**Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this

I would find out later on, that my last statement had been what stirred him, what had lit the light in his brain that had saved me; and what nearly killed him in the process. He would later claim that it hadn't mattered, that it had been worth it; that he'd do it again given the chance. I clashed my teeth, bidding my time until he was better, half the time trying to swallow my wrath at his stupidity and half the time, cursing myself for not foreseeing it.

Of course, of everything I'd said, "it just doesn't know it" would be the only thing that stuck in his brain. It wasn't even a coherent sentence, who in hell refers to a curse as "it," as if _it_ had a mind of its own. You either chose to give good foundation to a curse or you didn't; there was no "it" deciding if it was good enough or not.

I blamed it on on-the-verge-of-death insanity, but him, him! I have no excuse for him, what he did was appalling, right out unforgivable.

He decided to use an unbreakable vow of love to marry me, even if it killed him. Killed him alright, because the only way he could have kept his word was if I came back from the dead to say yes at the altar, and seeing as that wouldn't have happened, he was only signing his suicide note.

Not at all happy with timing his life limit to my last breath, he opened up the book to start chanting a binding spell, the kind of binding spell that was based on his feelings for me, and the kind that would get him sent to Azkaban for being done without my consent. Seeing as by then, I had been unconscious and that was how they had found us; there were guards waiting outside his ward.

Seeing as I was banned from his hospital ward until I could calm myself each time I spoke with him, I opted for a silent brooding on the seat next to his bed for the remainder of his stay there.

"Really, Hermione, they are going to think you wouldn't have agreed with it." He was talking about the guards. I breathed in and out to calm myself; it wouldn't do any good for me to yell how much my disagreement was, I didn't want to be thrown out again.

He had for some reason an ever-present smile on his lips; I started to think it was due to the drugs. Really, not even the death of his parents had deterred his cheery mood. Worst of all was, he couldn't quite grasp the concept of my wellbeing; he kept asking about my health all the time, not minding whatsoever my reproachful questions, or bothering to answer them or take them seriously.

So it was, that I bid my time until he was officially released and once out of his ward not even the guards could have stopped me from sending him back in. I was so royally pissed off at his gall that I was throwing sparks as I cornered him back inside. I knew the guards were looking a bit fearful, one even had voiced no one would be mad if they just let me kill him for binding me against my will.

The worst was that for all the ruckus I caused, Draco never stopped looking at me as if I was the most adorable creature that had graced the planet.

He was calmly trying to placate my wrath as if everything I threw at him were mere silliness from my ever-so-endearing behaviour.

I was going about my fifth, "Are you absolutely out of your fucking mind?" and my sixth "What in Merlin's balls were you thinking!" when an innocent, perhaps-too-gullible-for-her own-good nurse, dared interrupt me, asking me to hush it down a little for the sake of other patients. My silencing charm had the entire ward, including her, in absolute silence. Nothing could be heard from inside or out of what had once been his private room.

"Really, sweetheart, I don't think that was necessary," Draco said, shooing the nurse (who was still clutching her throat) out of view with an innocent wink.

"YOU DON'T THINK WHAT WAS NECESSARY, DRACO MALFOY? YOU SEEMED ABSOLUTELY FINE WITH YOUR SUICIDE ATTEMPTS THEN? Weren't you! And I say ATTEMPTS! As in PLURAL! Because you didn't think that freaking vow was enough, now, did you!" I roared.

"WHAT IN MERLIN'S NAME, WERE YOU THINKING!" I continued, "If you wanted to die, all you had to do was ask! I'M GOING TO KILL YOU WITH MY BARE HANDS!"

The worst of all was he kept his placating stance, as if he was barely dealing with an upset child. "Ok, sweetie, you can kill me all you want, but I think we should first head home, don't you?"

"Home? The hell, NO! I want them to heal you all up so I can start again, Malfoy! And then again! And again! Until you get a bloody grasp on how valuable life is!" I said throwing hex after hex that he didn't bother to dodge.

His slight flinches at my straight attacks were not keeping me satisfied, so I started with more-forceful curses as he kept walking – and then limping – towards me. "What the fuck, were you thinking, Draco?" I yelled at him when he reached me with his endearing smile.

"Of you, sweetie, of what life would be like without you," he said, quietly and calmly, as he pulled me towards him, falling on the bed as he did so. I wanted to start kicking, punching and screaming then, but all I did was fall in a ball of sobs and hiccups in his chest while he shushed me, rubbing circles on my back.

It took me a while to realize healers had been standing on the door, not daring to enter just yet. When Draco saw me notice them, he sweetly whispered, "They've been standing there for a while now, do you mind if we let them in?" I softly nodded and he signalled them to enter. Horde of cowards looked like rabbits entering the lion's den, all of them regrouped around the bed, not one of them daring to speak.

"Sweetie, do you mind if we sit up a little now?" I slowly complied, looking at him puzzled, "they just want to have a look at what those hexes did to me, but they'll have me all good and ready again in no time, love, and then you can start again, I promise." The horde of cowards started throwing weird glances among each other at his statement but no one dared to protest or question him.

I nodded at Draco, and only then did I took notice of all the blood on the bed, I cuddled a little closer to Draco to sniff the last of my sobs away, "In no time?" I whispered. "In no time," he ascertained, confident of his answer. I nodded against his chest to breathe in his scent, pretending not to notice the scared and horrified looks that the healers passed amongst them.

"I think I would have taken Azkaban any time, rather than her," a guard said.

"Yeah, he screwed up big time, didn't he?" the other answered.

"Stupid, good-for-nothing Death Eater, that's what he is, if you ask me," the last one assented, quickly hiding behind the others when he heard me growl. Draco just patted my back once again, in that placating way of his, holding that mesmerizing grin.


	16. Chapter 16

**Disclaimer:**Don't own anything but the plot, and I'm certainly not making money with this

I went on him again after they healed him, and once more when we went back home, his home. The last couple of times I healed him myself, while he whispered loving nonsenses on my ear, I wanted him to promise not to ever do it again, but all I could get from him were his vows of not ever willingly hurt me again, physically or otherwise.

He announced our engagement the next day; I could have floated with giddiness when I saw the picture on the Daily Prophet. They had placed a large quantity of articles of everyone's conjectures around what had prompted our engagement; I cursed the healers and the guards at St. Mungos for slipping information to the media, it made it all look like he was forcing me, or had somehow trapped me into marrying him to escape prison. He did not go to prison because I testified about all the times he had slipped information to our side. The allegations of my insanity from the guards hadn't helped either, so Harry and Ron had backed up my statement. I was reeling. It didn't matter though, I knew all my friends recognized my happiness as soon as they saw it plastered on my glowing picture in the Prophet. We all had our share of lies and deceptions in the press to recognize them when we saw them.

For all the fuzz they created about his supposedly bad intentions, he didn't seem to take in any of it; I had never seen him as happy and overprotective as I saw him back then. Despite my wishes to shut all the gossips and defamations on his name and have a public wedding where everyone could see me willingly and happily walk down the aisle (for I was glowing and practically jumping with it). He convinced me it would be better to make it private, with a strict security of the guests and access to only one reporter and editor, Luna Lovegood and her father. It was still a large wedding, I invited every family member and friend that I had, the ceremony was crowded with muggles and wizards, and I had them all seated in a circle with us in the middle because I didn't want anyone commenting on the lack of people on his side. He swore he didn't care, he said he was more than relieved to have the large majority of his relatives in Azkaban and only wished he could get a hold of all those that were in hiding to put them next to his dear-dead parents. I had a feeling it would be better for them if Harry found them first, because although Draco had never told me, I knew that the young Death Eaters that had assaulted me on the Slytherin dungeon as school boys, had not died tortured by my side as Voldemort had believed.

I was, for the longest time I can remember, the happiest person on the planet, I exuded happiness for days on end; I could not believe I was married after weeks into my honeymoon. He stared at my giddiness in wonderment while I literally pranced from one place to another; I held hands with him for absolutely everything; I chit chatted every worker, clerk, waiter, or receptionist that addressed us as Mister and Misses. The sales assistants in the resorts took no pity in using the "Misses Malfoy" jab whenever they wanted my attention towards a particularly nice garment. Half of what I bought I knew I would never dare to wear, but having them all calling from one corner to the other by my new name had me perspiring with cheerfulness and excitement.

And for all that, Draco followed me with a pensive look all around, like he couldn't understand just how it was possible that I found our situation so unbelievable, and for that matter, exciting. He had once mentioned I hadn't acted like this when he'd taken me to a tour of Italy and France, and well I couldn't explain how he'd just showed me a glimpse of what I'd never have, of what I wasn't stupid enough to keep dreaming of, of everything I knew she would end up taking for granted.

He couldn't for the longest time understand my disbelief at what was happening to me, but somewhere in the middle of my frenzy he just stopped me, turned me around and with the most adoring look I could imagine closed his nose to mine and whispered an "I love you," followed with, "and I'll never understand how you can love me back, but I sure as hell can accept it."

He acted like a domesticated puppy for the remainder of our honeymoon and a few weeks after that, until he found the letter of acceptance at the Auror department; he went ballistic, to say the least. I couldn't understand what all the fuzz was about, and would have probably retaliated with as much fury when he mentioned he had already sent an owl rejecting the position. To think he was still furious with me after doing that.

However, just as he found my letter of acceptance I had received an owl from the healer explaining the reason behind my sickness.

So there, the reason I had been hardly hearing any of the things Draco was yelling at me in his tirade, or my inability to answer any of his rebukes. I had been completely petrified by the contents of the letter. For all I knew, it took ages for Draco to notice, he would claim, of course, he had been alarmed by my lack of reaction from the start. The good thing is that at some point, he did notice, and took the piece of parchment from my hands glaring at it as if it had insulted him personally, and then practically drooling over the contents with giddiness, yes, giddiness; a state that didn't suit Draco in the least.

Without any warning, and without really knowing how it happened I was being turned around in his embrace, the room circling around me at a fast speed, it wasn't a surprise to anyone that I ended up puking my breakfast all over Draco's shirt, and he still had his joyful and all about delight, radiating from him. He gently put me down and asked if I was ok.

I puked again and felt like I was answering, he should have at least flinched away from his glowing mood.

But from then on until the day I swore he would never touch me again, he became an insufferable ponce who didn't know when to shut up, leave me alone, or dare I say it, ravish me. The worst was that towards the end, when I felt I couldn't take it anymore, and the hormones were driving me insane with need, he decided it couldn't be healthy for the baby to touch me that way. I would have broken his neck if not for the wonderful heads he'd give me, that along his decision of granting "mummy" everything she wanted had saved his life in many occasions.

He would have survived unscathed if not for his absurd insinuation about wanting to have another one just by looking at his new bundle of joy, on the day of delivery! But that's beside the point. He learned his lesson after the first week he couldn't sit straight. Sadly, it didn't deter him from trying a few months later.

***The End***

**A/N:** Thank you for reading and reviewing everyone. You've been great.


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